On my recent visit to Cherbourg, I made a short trip to the beautiful château pictured above. It has some wonderful gardens and a great tearoom. It's worth a visit - especially at this time of year - just to enjoy these gardens which were laid out by René Clérel de Tocqueville. If the name sounds familiar - it is because he was the nephew of Alexis de Tocqueville - who wrote "Democracy in America". It was Alexis' father who bought the château (and began to restore the manor house).
The château is also famous for other reasons. At the end of the sixteenth century the manor was lived in by the Raval family which included eleven children. Two of them were very close, Julien (b 1582) and Marguerite (b 1586) - to the extent that their parents separated them, and married off Marguerite to a thirty year old, when she was just fourteen. It was an unhappy marriage and she fled to her brothers home near Paris (he was 21 by this time). Her father had the two arrested and they were tried for adultery and incest. They were both executed on 2nd December 1603.There was also a murder at the château. In 1661 Charles de Franquetot was killed by five masked men, two of whom were his valets.
Today the Château is owned by the town of Cherbourg. The (French language) website can be found at http://www.ville-cherbourg.fr/themes/culture/patrimoine/le-chateau-des-ravalet/
Brittany Ferries also has a brief description on its website - http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/guides/france/normandy/cherbourg/attractions/chateau-des-ravalet
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